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I boiled one of my Birkenstocks for breakfast today. It’s not as terrible as it sounds – the Carbon Footprint caused by firing up my stove was actually offset by the Eco-Credits I earned for not wearing any shoes today. It’s not like I’ve never been forced to eat my footwear before, either. In the entire 20th Century, there was only one stock market crash, followed by one little depression. Since Bush stole the peeResidency, there has been a recession, a stock market crash, another recession, years of stagnation (not the good, Jimmy Carter kind of stagnation, either), then yesterday’s stock market crash which will likely lead to the Great Depression of our time. Thanks to the Shrub, I’ve digested enough shoes in the past six years to make Imelda Marcos gag.

I got smart after the 9/11 crash, though, and started squirrelling shoes away for the next big storm. So don’t worry about ol’ Larry, I’ll weather Bush’s Depression just fine. However, there are thousands of working families out there that can’t afford to put shoes on their dinner table. Who will care for them? Certainly not the so-called “Compassionate Conservatives”, who are far too selfish and greedy to feed someone the loafers off their own saintly feet. It must be up to us as progressives to scour the thrift stores and garage sales for every pair of used sneakers, sandals, and slippers we can find, and we must do it NOW before Bush and his gouging Big Footwear Buddies have a chance to corner the market.

It's too late to prevent Bush's depression. But together, we can rebuild America out of the ashes of Capitalism, leading it into a bright, new, social utopia with a government-issued boot in every pot and three families living in every garage.

Feted at Sundance. Fellated at the Oscars. There may even be a Nobel Prize in his future. After having his election and subsequent re-election stolen from him, it appears that Al Gore is finally getting the respect he deserves – and not just from the lesbian community. The whole world is united in love and admiration for the man who would awaken us to an inconvenient truth and save us from our own polluting selves.

There are, as expected, the typical right-wing bullies on the beach who can’t resist kicking sand in Al’s face as he basks in the glow of his much-deserved stardom. Always the turds in the proverbial punchbowl, these smearmongers have procured “evidence” that Gore uses twenty times more electricity than your average American household. Well, of course he does – he’s twenty times more important than your average American. What the GOP attack machine neglects to factor into their hate-fueled orgy of hate is the utter itsy-bitsyness of Gore’s teensy weensy “carbon footprint” – ithat is, the amount of damage one does to the environment simply by cursing this planet with their existence.

Naturally, Al Gore’s carbon footprint is drastically smaller than that of a carbon-based lifeform. This allows him to enjoy the sort of lavish lifestyle that only a progressive celebrity truly deserves. There is also the matter of "carbon offsets" to consider - special “Eco-Credits” we can use to offset the amount of Carbon Debt we incur throughout our daily lives. The more environmentally-friendly you are, the more credits you obtain. Voting Democrat, for instance, earns you an automatic 1000 Eco-Credits. Wearing earth tones gets you another 5,000 Eco-Credits. Having at least one Prius in your 17-car garage is worth 20,000 Eco-Credits, and an additional 10,000 if you slap a Greenpeace bumper sticker on it. For those who can't afford a hybrid vehicle, abortions an inexpensive way to nab an easy 10,000 credits. Once you have accumulated enough Eco-Credits, you can exchange them for the privilege of heating your home, driving your car, or flushing your toilet.

Unfortunately, there are only so many Eco-Credits to go around, and Al Gore has most of them. His tireless devotion to scaring the crap out of people has earned him enough Eco-Credits that he could raise a herd of bean-fed bovines in his front yard and still have enough left over to heat his indoor olympic swimming pool for the next 1000 years if he wanted to. Instead, Gore has chosen to hold his vast wealth of Eco-Credits in trust for the America people, until such a time that Mother Earth has passed safely from the under shadow of an environmental holocaust. Until that day comes, it is important that the rest of us reduce our carbon footprints by shutting off our heat, turning off our lights, and eating cold dog food directly from the can.

I’ve been to a few such festivals myself and I’ve never seen him at any of them. It's downright shameful. In fact, I was recently commenting to some of my fellow Support Our Babykilling Troops* members that an appearance by Bush, as much as we hate his guts, might actually be a good thing. It would certainly boost attendance, and perhaps draw a little extra business to our Dessert for Deserters® cupcake stand, or maybe even sell a few extra “Impeach Chimpy McBushitler” t-shirts. With thousands of peace activists coming together to protest against the Shrub’s illegal and immoral war, we also wouldn’t have to worry about our anti-Bush chants beings drowned out by 21 gun salutes or the incessant crying of neocon family members. There’d be safety in numbers, as well. I doubt any deranged jingoist will make a move on our “Babykiller Had it Coming” banner with 8,000 angry pacifists ready to scratch his eyes out if he tries. Most importantly, the large media presence that a Bush appearance always draws would open our cause to a lot of much-needed publicity.

That’s exactly why Bush will never grace one military funeral with his presence. He only cares about our troops as long as it furthers his political agenda.

Halliburton Dick Cheney recently made the wild accusation that by calling for the immediate redeployment of our troops away from the battlefield, Democratic leaders only encourage the so-called “enemy”.

Let’s pretend for a moment that he’s right. Does he really need to blab the plan to every terrorist and his Uncle? In his rush to attack Nancy Pelosi’s patriotism, did Cheney even bother to consider that maybe emboldening the so-called terrorists with the illusion of victory is part of a cunning plan to lure them here, to our soil, where they can be easily apprehended and given the kind of emotional counseling they truly need? The idiot cons like to say that it’s better to fight them “over there” than “over here”, but in all honesty where would you rather Bush’s silly war be waged – on the terrorists’ turf where they are familiar with the terrain, or here in the streets of America where our troops have the home field advantage?

The answer is obvious, but it won’t happen until neocons like Cheney learn to keep their big yaps shut and let the Democrats do their business.

Much like the Living, Breathing Constitution and the Clinton marriage, Friday's House vote to denounce Bush’s illegal and immoral troop surge was non-binding and largely symbolic. At the very worse, it will serve to give Iraqi freedom fighters a glimmer of hope that victory is finally at hand. Is that really so bad – giving hope to the hopeless? The Senate repugs obviously think so, for they refused to even allow the measure to be debated. So much for democracy. So much for supporting our troops.

Righteously outraged democrats won't be silenced, however, and vow to take new, more “drastic” steps to end the war and bring our troops home - steps that even the Iraqi freedom fighters haven't thought of yet. They may include showboating, bloviation and, if the Republicans refuse to play ball, Senator Kennedy vomitting a gallon of gin and shrimp scampi all over the floor of Congress in the name of Peace.

Mitt Romney has officially announced his intentions to steal the 2008 election, yet it has aroused little excitement in fellow party members who feel he’s not “conservative” enough for their support. Romney's against gay marriage and less than enthusiastic about abortion – he’d have to invade Poland to be any more “conservative”. Still, the GOP mullahs are worried that Romney may only be pretending to be one of them to woo Republican voters.

Gosh, if there was only some way for Romney to show the GOP that his conservativism is sincere.

Oh, I know!

A Hitler mustache would not only serve to convince Romney’s fellow Republicans that he’s conservative enough to become Der Fuhrer, but also save progressive bloggers the trouble of having to photoshop one on.

Let's face it: people are going to make the obvious connections anyway. Romney is far more Hitleresque than Bush, who is himself more Hitleresque than even Hitler was. So MittLER might as well make it official and sprout a little Nazi 'stache before one of the other Repug runners steals the idea.